


Make your own hell

by captainhurricane



Category: Metal Gear, Silent Hill
Genre: Crossover, Gen, i'm sorry i'm awful to everyone in this and only BB deserves it, phantom pain spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-15
Updated: 2015-09-19
Packaged: 2018-04-20 23:23:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4806125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainhurricane/pseuds/captainhurricane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The man we know as John walks into a certain town and faces the ghosts of his past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for Phantom Pain's ending. Also this might not make a whole lot of sense. I'm kinda over-emotional. Also let's face it, Big Boss deserves worse than this. But there isn't much that might scare a man like him. I might continue if i get inspired. Inspired by http://corpsefluid.tumblr.com/post/129048287705/petition-to-send-big-boss-to-silent-hill-until-he.

Fear had been one of the first things the Boss had taught Snake to make into a weapon. Just watch us, the Cobras, the way we take an emotion into battle with us. Make it our own, live with it, let it spread to those around us. Fear is one of them. What is it but the knowledge that there is something and someone unknown? There is nothing to fear in this life but yourself. And when you defeat that fear, you are invinsible.

 

The Boss had taught Snake many things but she had never taught him how to deal with grief.

 

x

 

Snake inhales. The mist circling him is cold to the touch, his mouth tasting like ash. There was a gun in his hand, a comrade by his side but now there is only echo and emptiness. He starts to walk and his feet make no sound. He squints, tries to see through the mist but there is nothing but silence. His ears are still ringing from the rage and fire he was on just a blink of an eye ago. Fingers curling around nothing, he continues to walk. The street under his heavy military-boots is paved and covered with dull, grey ash that still keeps falling from the sky. Snake glances behind. Just now, he was kneeling beside a comrade, shouting an order and dodging a bullet. Just now, his heaven was on fire.

 

Now his surroundings are empty and dead, his earphone filled with sizzling static. Snake grunts and takes it off, stuffing it into one of his pockets. Might come in handy later. Or not.

 

Snake doesn’t call out, figures nobody would answer. And if someone did they probably wouldn’t be anyone he would like to hear an answer from. At least one of his questions is answered by the appearance of a sign.

 

Welcome to Silent Hill.

 

The letters are scratched into the partly rotten wood like those in a 17th century letter but there is nothing decorative or inviting about the sign. Snake stops and frowns. No place he’s ever heard of. Yet the sign is in English so that’s some comfort. Tense and ready for a fight as he is, adrenaline still surging through his veins, Snake’s head snaps back up when his ears pick a sound. He stays still for a second, breathes quietly but the sound doesn’t come again. His fingers curl but the comforting weight of his gun is gone.

 

So is the comfort of his base, of his soldiers. Oh, how they would die for him and they have and they will.

 

Snake doesn’t shout, Snake doesn’t speak. He walks with steady footsteps forward, the ash continuing to fall on him and covering everything in dull, deafening silence.

 

Only his instincts save him from the screeching sound heading towards him and the familiar bang of a gun. He grunts and frowns at the tiny rip the wheezing bullet had made at his sleeve. Crouching, he starts to sneak towards the sound.

 

The closer he gets, the more alive his surroundings grow. The ash and thick mist start to clear to reveal buildings, all old and empty and rotten. Their black windows glaring down at him, judging and dead. The sound doesn’t come again but the vision does: it’s a man, heaving and vomiting, on his hands and knees on the street. Snake doesn’t see a gun but he’s still careful as he sneaks closer. The strange man heaves, vomits blood and- Snake frowns. There is a pile of guts on the street and when the man raises his head, Snake sees that his face only consists of three mouths, or gasping and wailing.

Only close enough Snake hears the only word the mouths keep repeating:

 

”Boss.”

 

Snake stills, draws back his reaching hand.

 

”Boss,” the creature wails, crawls closer. His- its?- hands are covered in tattered black gloves, its broken body in military uniform. Snake’s jaw clenches when he sees the emblem on the creature’s left arm.

 

”Whatever you are, you are not one of my men,” Snake says then, surprised at how quiet and small his voice sounds in this odd quiet world.

 

”Boss-” the creature’s wrists twist, breaking apart in Snake’s eyes.

”Boss-” Yet again, Snake manages to dodge the bullet wheezing at him from another direction. It lodges itself in the creature instead and it lets out the same screech that Snake heard before, stops its slow crawl towards Snake.

Snake backs away, glances around himself. Yet the town- this Silent Hill, clouds of mist still drizzling throughout the buildings- remains still and dead.

 

”Boss!” The creature yelps, the voice oddly humanlike. Snake takes that as his cue to leave and decides to go for the big building on his left, the door ripped off its hinges and left to rot on the ground.

 

The creature’s wails disappear the instant Snake steps inside. He glances back and the street is empty, even the piles of vomit and guts have vanished. The street is as clean and empty as ever.

 

Snake is not much of a believer in the supernatural, not anymore but he can’t figure out a logical explanation for ending up in a strange city with a strange creature dressed in a familiar uniform- calling out to him, reaching out to him. Hadn’t Snake just now watched yet another one of his men die, his last thought, his last word of him like always?

 

”It’s a coincidence,” Snake says aloud. The building doesn’t answer and neither does his own head.

 

He blinks, tries to adjust his eyes to the darkness of the building. He tries the light switch but already knows it won’t work. He finds a counter and two rows of keys- a motel, then?- and a broken cash register but there is nothing he can do with money in a town like this. At least there is also a flashlight and a tiny box of batteries, like someone had left it behind in a hurry. Snake clicks and a part of the building’s insides are bathed in bright, slightly yellow light.

 

With a grunt, Snake continues.

 

The building does turn out to be a hotel, an old sign pointing to what used to be the restaurant, now apparently filled with pieces of furniture and- Snake stills yet again. Bodies. Pieces of bodies, only few of them whole. All of them missing their legs. Like someone had taken people and stuffed them into the bones of the ruined restaurant, made sure they all suffocated and died there. Such a waste.

 

Snake’s radio buzzes. He blinks, tries to yank it out of his pocket, press it against his ear.

”Hello?” He says uselessly. For a moment there is only static. Then-

”Boss.” It’s not the same as the wailing creature, not the same as the adoring, loyal voices of his soldiers. It’s him, the one Snake left behind all that time ago.

”Why did you do it, boss?” Snake’s jaw clenches. He hadn’t heard or seen Kaz in years, not since the helicopter and the crash that burned their former lives away. The last he heard, Kaz had taken it to himself to move to cold lonely wilderness.

”Kaz?” Snake says. The static crackles again, Kaz’s voice vanishes. Snake yanks off the radio again and stares at it. How long ago had it been? He had left Kaz behind for a reason but not without a cause. He had let Kaz be the one to take revenge for MSF, had even left him with his own phantom, a mirror image of himself. Yet- hadn’t that been enough?

 

(”Boss.”)

 

Shaking his head, Snake puts the earpiece back to his pocket and continues looking for answers. If there are any to be had. This building doesn’t hold them, its stairs too creaky under his boots. It wouldn’t do to fall and get stuck. A gasp when a radio crackles on somewhere upstairs, loud and clear and starts to play a vaguely familiar song.

”Hello?” Snake raises his voice but nobody answers him. The radio plays, the woman sings. Here’s to you.

Disliking this more and more, Snake withdraws from the stairs and turns. His surprise doesn’t show on his face but on his hand that grips the flashlight tighter.

 

The writing hadn’t been there just a second ago.

 

The sins of the father will never die has been splattered on the wall haphazardly, like someone in a great hurry just had to write the words down before anything happened- like Snake turning around. Now, Snake hadn’t feared a thing in years, had learned to either squash his fears or turn them into a weapon- like he himself is a weapon- but now he knows to name the way his skin crawls as uneasiness. He prefers straight-out fights, battlefields, the rattle of bullets. The occasional sneaking around if it means he gets to have a clear victory in the end. Not this eccentricity, these tricks.

 

”I am nobody’s father,” Snake says to the writing on the wall. Goes to them, takes off his other glove to feel the letters. The paint- paint?- is dry and smooth. Like it had always been there. Shaking his head once more, Snake withdraws and turns to leave. His flashlight meets only discarded clothes and furniture, few suitcases and a flash of green, his ears picking up the sound of a snicker.

”Hey!” He hurries towards the sound, towards the flash of green but it’s gone when he reaches the backdoor. He’s back in the street, back in the ash-filled silence. The outlines of buildings are visible through it, quite like a suburb of some kind. Feeling an odd kind of agitation that hadn’t plagued him in years, he takes careful steps. Keeps an eye on his surroundings, wondering what next will come at him from the shadows of this dead town.

 

The next sound that meets his ears is the sound of someone crying. A man or a woman, Snake can’t quite tell. He shuts the flashlight but keeps it in his hand, glancing around but unable to figure out the direction the sound is coming from. He continues on, tense but slightly curious. His skin prickles. Is somebody watching?

 

The same song that he heard before comes again, this time trickling through an open upper-story window in what looks like an apartment building. The door is hanging open. Snake makes his way inside, careful not to step into the holes opened in the floor, few or more floorboards ripped open. The song is quite loud inside, the same sad few words about men wrongfully executed for crimed they did not commit. Snake thinks of his men, of his phantom. Out there in the world, above ground then under the ground, all dying and gone soon.

 

”I didn’t choose for them,” he says quietly, more to himself than to whatever phantoms hide in the silence. His earpiece crackles.

”But you did,” comes Kaz’s voice. Angry this time, accusing. Snake raises the earpiece to his ear once more.

”We would have followed you into hell,” spits Kaz, the words spread apart by the crickle and crackle of static but the meaning clear.

”I would have done everything for you and I did- I did!”

”Kaz,” Snake says again, useless.

”I lost it all!” Snake has to tear off the earpiece again, Kaz’s voice rising in volume.

”For you! For… you-” and then it’s gone again, accompanied with one final, shaky sob.

 

Snake swallows, frown deepening on his face. If this is a dream, he would prefer to wake up. The ever-present grief in his heart drills a deeper hole. The memory of Costa Rica, of a time a couple of decades ago seem like it all happened to someone else.

”The past is past, Kaz,” Snake says to no one in particular. Kaz- or whatever spirit of Kaz’s that was- doesn’t answer.

”I did what I had to. For us, for MSF. For the future.”

 

There is nothing but static.

 

The building reveals its rooms one by one as Snake carefully makes his way upstairs, flashlight turned on once more to reveal doorknobs and names on doors, all faded away by whatever catastrophe had turned the town into this tomb. There is banging on one of the doors from the other side. It dies when Snake steps closer. Someone screams from behind another door but Snake does nothing. He turns a corner and there is a boy, a lanky teenager in an army green shirt and trousers. His face has matured and his blond hair more swept back but it’s Eli. The hate-filled mouth is the same, the bright, burning eyes the same. He’s holding a bleeding pig’s head. Flies buzz around it.

 

”Eli?” Snake holds his flashlight he would hold a gun. Eli, this wild-haired grown up Eli reveals two rows of his white teeth. For a moment he looks like a snake himself and Snake tenses when he notices the clear physical similarities between them.

”Nobody’s father, eh?” There it is, that snappy accent and words spat out like poison.

”What a nice thing to say to yourself.” Eli squeezes but the pig’s head doesn’t give in, it’s eyes long gone. Eli’s hands are stained in its blood, flies buzzing over his long, thin fingers.

 

”You are no son of mine,” Snake says, but quietly now, holds back the anger. He didn’t ask for children. He didn’t ask for his genes, his DNA to be stolen. He didn’t ask for two living children; this one with his brightly burning anger and the other one that he had only seen in a flash. Had recognized the wolf in that one

 

”You are no son of mine,” Eli imitates and then raises the pig’s head, raises it and then jams it onto his own head. Blood trickles down the pale, open throat. Snake frowns, steps closer. Wonders if this is yet another hallucination. Eli goes silent, puts a hand behind his back. Snake draws breath like he would draw a gun: quick, sharp. Eli pulls a gun and shoots but the bullet misses. Wildly cackling, he disappears into the room behind himself and slams the door.

”Eli!” Snake slams his hand repeatedly against it but it’s like the door is made of iron rather than wood. It doesn’t give way at all. Eli’s voice, Eli’s bloodied hands are gone. Snake closes his eyes for a moment, rubs his forehead.

 

”I didn’t ask to be born like this, you know,” comes a whisper next to him. Snake turns, ready for another fight but only meets a serious young face and hands held behind a straight soldier’s posture.

”Maybe not,” Snake says. He knows who this is. David looks relatively normal against the odd, rotten backdrop but he meets Snake’s gaze head-on: his eyes accusing and very dark.

”I didn’t ask for it! I didn’t ask for a father like you!” The calmness vanishes as David attacks, his hands turning into claws, his eyes and ears and mouth bleeding as he shouts, hands grabbing for Snake’s jacket.

”I didn’t ask! I didn’t ask!” The attack is over before Snake can properly wrench away those smaller hands, this hallucination-David retreating back into relative normalcy despite the dried blood on his face. He starts to sway, starts to stare through Snake.

”We were made in your image but to you, we will always be nature’s perversions. And oh-” not-David blinks. ”She is very disappointed in you.”

 

Snake blinks.

 

His son of none is gone.

 

Snake stands still, staring at the spot not-David was occupying just now. What does it mean? Is this another hallucination created by someone like Mantis? And why would someone go to such lengths? It’s not him who had shrapnel in their face. And his phantom had started to push the demon out of himself for a while now, had stopped hallucinating so vividly. Not that the man on fire had been any hallucination.

 

Snake doesn’t understand this. Yet inside, he knows what all these grotesque phantoms talk about.

 

And the ‘she’- could it be?

 

Only now that he focuses once more in the building, he realizes the song in the other room has changed to another one he had last heard so long ago.

”I waited,” his earpiece crackles with Kaz’s voice yet again. Now sad, so full of longing it sneaks into the holes drilled into what’s left of Snake’s heart.

”I waited for you to come back,” Kaz’s voice shakes. Snake doesn’t have to take the earpiece from his pocket now, Kaz’s voice is loud enough to be heard clearly.

”Nine years. You know what that time spent waiting does to people? Every day I feared the news that you had passed away. Nine years. And then the you that came back wasn’t you.” Anger creeps into Kaz’s words.

 

”I waited so long for you but you never came back.” Snake sighs. He hadn’t thought about Kaz in quite some time, had followed his progress through the news and his phantom but had barely spared a thought towards his former comrade. They were the best of brothers in arms once upon a time.

”I had bigger plans,” Snake says aloud.

”You would have had a place in our nation,” he continues. The only thing that answers is a quiet sob and then back to static.

 

It doesn’t matter now. It had mattered then. What had the phantom thought? With Snake’s face, Snake’s memories and Snake’s voice?

Snake makes his way to the door from where the song is coming from but before he can try the knob, a bullet wheezes through the air. Snake barely dodges it but it still rips a hole in his suit, making him open his mouth in a gasp. He turns, freezing in place.

 

Coming at him down the corridor is her. She is a storm in a person, had always been one when she had been alive but now, this twisted, blackened version of her is a hurricane ready to sweep Snake away. Oddly enough, her twisted fingers have curled around the handle of her trusted gun and she shoots again, he barely dodges again. Her blond hair is matted with blood, sweaty and stuck to her temples. The bullet hole between her eyes- cold and dark and bleeding- is gaping, like a twisted third eye. More eyes pop in her widening shoulders, in her hands, in the gun.

”Disappointment, Jack,” hisses the monster that wears the face of the Boss and Snake’s insides tear apart in. He had been a dead man walking ever since her but now he breathes and backs away like some common man.

”Boss,” he wheezes as she shoots again and the bullet hits him straight in the stomach. IT buries itself in his suit. The Boss yowls, the sound piercing Snake’s ears and making him hiss and nearly drop to his knees from the sheer force of it. The dim lights of the corridor flicker and die, as does his flashlight.

 

”I didn’t die for this!”

 

She shoots again. The earpiece crackles.

”Boss-” whines the ghostly voice of Kaz.

 

Snake’s vision goes black.


	2. Forward

”-a better man than you-” 

Static. Faint music from somewhere above. Snake blinks. A moment of sweet nothing until the pain hits and he turns, finds himself on his stomach and retches. 

”-and him of all people!” 

His ears full of cotton, he doesn't at first register that somebody is speaking. The voice, loud and clear and betrayed is coming from his earpiece, laying on the floor further away. It crackles and breaks, the sentence coming in few chaotic pieces but it's Kaz once more, shouting his grief for all to hear. Yet when Snake reaches- after he's emptied his stomach and found no bullet holes, no death beckoning him closer- for the earpiece, it shuts down and whatever figment of Kaz is left in it is gone.

What the hell happened? What the hell is going on? 

It had been the boys, his clones. He hadn't seen them as grown-ups but had seen them as children- Eli in Africa, pale and angry, David in photographs, serious like a wolf cub- and it had been them. His children. What a thought. 

Snake wipes his mouth multiple times, can't quite get the taste of vomit and blood out. He gets up from the floor, the floorboards creaking under his boots. He's still in the hotel, it seems. The same ugly old wallpaper, the same claustrophobic atmosphere. It's a room, not the corridor; two paintings on the walls depicting the same dull landscape. The window is too dirty to see through. Snake grunts as he stretches, tries to stand still for a second to make the dizziness go away. 

When it does, he can look around more- for information, for something to use as a weapon.

Had that really been her? The voice, although distorted and growly, had been hers. The disappointment had been the same. 

Snake's mouth tightens, his fingers curl. He tastes blood on his tongue. Even if it was her, it doesn't matter. The Boss is dead and so is the world she wanted. 

”Hello?” 

Not even an echo answers as Snake goes to the corridor, the doorknob biting cold even through his gloves. There's a bloody handprint on the other side of the door but Snake doesn't look at it, doesn't acknowledge it. He's seen worse. 

The corridor is long, lot longer than the one he faced his clones in but he starts walking it anyway. He has little choice, considering he doesn't know this place or where the creeping mist, now curling around his ankles comes from. It brings to mind memories, of winter-cold water reaching his chest and the ghost whispering of dead things in front of him. The Sorrow had truly lived up to his name. 

This isn't Snake's first encounter with what can only be called supernatural but it's certainly the most personal: all what he's seen so far, all relating to him somehow. Snake wonders who else is going to show up to accuse him, to shout at him. To spit their grief and rage at his face. His fingers curl tighter into a fist as he walks with steady but careful steps forward, not eager to fall down through the fragile-looking floorboards. 

Peeking past the railing does nothing except tell him he's on the third floor and show a wide trail of blood in the middle of the lounge downstairs. 

Jaw clenching, Snake makes his way down. His breathing too ragged and hard in his ears, he needs to go out even if it means facing another creature with a face made of mouths or breathing in the gray ash. His fingers clench and unclench. The fist forms and then opens again. If only he had a gun. 

If only he had his comrades. If only he hadn't- 

Snake swallows. It's no use thinking of the past and of what could have been. He needs to figure out how to get back to his base and out of this odd hallucination. 

X

The street offers no answers, neither does the next one. Snake takes a look into a couple of more buildings but some are shut tight, some have nothing but crumbling walls. At least he finds himself a baseball bat in what seems like the remains of a sports store. It's sturdy enough and Snake takes a couple of practice swings. The bat is intact and sturdy so Snake tucks it under his arm. He walks in the faint, barely there shadows of the buildings, not eager to take the middle of the street. 

The ash falls. The mist slithers, thicker now. For a few times Snake stops, squints. Thinks he can see the flash of lights in the pale grey, hear shuffling footsteps. But the mist and the ash stifle all sounds and Snake can walk indisturbed.

He glances behind himself, tries to hear anything, anyone. 

There. Is that something squishing in the darkness of the building on his right? Snake stops, listens. He stares hard at the building but sees nothing but the open doorway. One more glance around tells Snake that nothing has changed in his surroundings so he makes his way to the building and walks through the door. The first loud creak of the floor tells him enough and he backs away to the doorway, reaches for his flashlight. It's so hard to see, despite the muted grey mist slithering against his back still. 

Again. There it is again. Something squishing, something dragging itself or being dragged. Snake's skin crawls. He tenses even more when he hears static start from somewhere below him but it doesn't lead up to anything. Snake's steps slow down as he curls his fingers around the bat, the other still holding the flashlight. 

A long, pained moan. Snake frowns and looks for a way down, certain that the sound came from below. He doesn't call out, doesn't flinch. Not even when the moan turns into another and then into screams of pain. Familiar screams of pain. It might have been over a decade ago but Snake remembers. 

Insides growing colder, he finally founds an elevator and only momentarily hesitates before stepping inside. He doesn't even press a button before the doors ping closed and the elevator starts to descend, its dim lights flickering to life. Like drawn by some outside force, Snake's head turns and he meets the gaze of his reflection, a sharp blue eye in the middle of an aging face. There's dried blood on his lips, on his face. Grey on his temples, slithering its way to his dark hair. Snake blinks. The reflection changes. The horn growing longer, shrapnel forever etched into scarred, stitched up skin. The reflection turns his head. 

”Are you sure you are you?” The reflection, no, his phantom says in his long-forgotten voice. Snake grips his bat tighter, barely notices as the elevator pings and stops its descent. 

”You let even yourself be killed for nothing,” his phantom says. His other self. This other Big Boss who took on his guilt, his mission, his dogs of war and made them into their own heaven. One more person Snake hasn't thought of in years. 

”I am not dead,” Snake says but when he blinks, it's his own face again. 

Are you sure you are you? 

Snake grunts and steps out of the elevator, flashlight meeting a long, pitch-black hallway. 

X

The air is stuffed full of all the sounds an old, half-rotten building makes. Any more of this unbroken, stale air and it might get hard to breathe. The flashlight sweeps the corridors of the basement Snake has reached and finally stops on a pile of broken things. The squishing and squelching is heard clearer now, the pained screams have died down but they have been replaced by the moans. Snake steps closer, glances around once more. Snifs the air. Gunpowder. Blood. Decay. 

”Snake,” slithers the voice from somewhere beneath the pile of ruin. It moves, it shifts, a pale hand meets free air. Snake stills, keeping his bat at ready.   
”Snake,” the distorted voice says yet again. It's clearer now that whoever that hand belongs to is making their way up. The first hand is joined by another, then the head comes up. Even full of dirt and ash, even when half of the face is broken and gone, Snake would know Paz. She had spoken of peace. She had tried to kill him. She had been just one more body stomped under the boots of his dogs of war. 

This Paz is a broken, burned husk, her hair as short as it was when she jumped to her death. She's missing her other eye, but the other is staring at Snake, wide and bloodshot. She drags herself out of the pile, made easier by her missing everything from the chest down. The remains of her orange prisoner-jumpsuit are mingling with her intestines, her mouth hanging open. The pained, constant whines and moans are coming from her. 

Snake is still, gripping his weapons tighter and tighter.   
”Sssssnake,” Paz groans, ignoring that she cuts her hand in an empty tin can. She leaves a wide trail of blood behind her as she starts to crawl closer. Nothing of the girl she was in life is left. A tear makes its way down her dirty cheek from her only eye.  
”Peace,” she grunts. The pain in her voice pierces Snake. It's true she had been a enemy agent, that she had piloted Zeke against him. But- hadn't she found companionship? Hadn't Kaz told him how much she had learned to laugh? 

”Paz,” Snake says, voice barely audible.   
”We tried.” 

Does the husk of her even listen or hear, he doesn't know. It- she- continues to drag herself towards him.  
”Ssssnake,” Paz's spirit groans, that empty, crying eye staring up at him.   
”Ill- ill-” she tries to speak but her mouth is half-gone, her tongue unable to keep still. The difference between this and the young woman Snake remembers is jarring.   
”Pain- is-” she had kept saying those words when he had rescued her. Had thought he had rescued her.   
”Illu-illus-” a gasp. For every centimetre she manages, Snake backs away.   
”ion-” 

”Ssssnake-” her word slurrs, turns into a whimper. She starts to shake uncontrollably, like stuck in her final living moments. Snake opens his mouth;   
”Paz, what-” she had been their angel of peace. Their symbol of peace. Even in a fit of rage, she hadn't been the worst of them. On a larger scale, she could have even been called innocent.   
”Another, another-” Paz moans, flipping her legless torso around. Bloodied foam starts forming at her mouth, her only eye flipping up.   
”In my, in my, in my-” Snake backs away, quicker now, listens to the barely audible, slurred words coming through her foaming mouth in quick succession. 

He barely has time to dodge or roll out of sight when an explosion shakes the foundations of the building, followed by a miniature shock wave.

Tossed to the cold granite floor, Snake's instincts, even blurred as they are, save him from landing face first. He rolls to the side, drags himself against the wall. He takes off a glove and presses it against his chest, taking huge, deep breaths. Eyes closed, ears ringing, he feels shut off from the world. Seeing Paz so mangled, broken beyond repair- he blinks and raises his gloveless hand. It's trembling. 

Static. 

Kaz's voice, inaudible. Snake licks his dry lips and takes the earpiece, sticks it in place this time.   
”- better-” Kaz murmurs.   
”I'm going to make them better, make them stronger.” This time it doesn't sound accusing, more like Kaz talking to himself.   
”To send him to hell. For forgetting me. For forgetting. For... why did you forget me, boss?” the sentence vanishes. No static. Snake rubs his forehead.

”Kaz?” 

Nothing. Snake stretches his legs in front of him, sees how blood has splattered all over his sturdy black boots. 

”If you're listening. If any of you are listening. Or can even hear.” 

The dead are not silent, had the the Sorrow whispered to him when he had been younger, when he had been more foolish. Perhaps he had always been a fool. It should have been The Boss in the end, saluting and being congratulated. Not him, with her blood forever in his hands. 

The dead are not silent.

”I didn't .. forget. Any of you.” 

The building is quiet. Snake gets up, looks around. He looks behind himself, to that dark hole where Paz's husk had crawled from. It's decimated, now full of rubble and blood. He takes his leave on shaky legs. They hadn't quite worked properly ever since the seventies but at least he had kept all of his limbs. Snake frowns at the thought, reaches the elevator. Many of his men and women had lost limbs, Kaz most of all. Snake hadn't been there to witness it but had heard. And known where Kaz disappeared to after leaving Diamond Dogs and the phantom. 

And leaving Snake. 

”How could we forget you, boss?” Whispers Kaz, a sadness there that Snake had never heard from him.   
”You broke us. You made us. You gave us a home, a purpose, a cause.” 

The elevator whirrs. Snake doesn't stop to think why and how it's working when everything else seems to be in pieces. 

”I did,” he says, uncertain if any of the phantoms even hear.   
”But in doing that... you took everything else away. Until nothing else mattered but you. Living and dying for you.”   
”Kaz,” Snake says, voice lower, uncertain. Kaz laughs but it's a tired old man's laugh. Then there is once again silence. 

Snake waits, but Kaz doesn't speak again. So Snake steps out of the elevator, back on street level. 

X

Maybe it's only been an hour. 

X

Maybe two. 

X

Are you sure you are you? 

X

After thirteen streets, crossroads and twenty-three buildings, Snake loses the interest in counting. He encounters three more creatures like the first one, all dressed in familiar uniforms, all moaning for their boss. He thinks he can hear Eli's laughter from somewhere but the boy doesn't show himself again. Few more radios playing long-forgotten songs, few more laments from Kaz who says nothing in return when Snake calls his name. 

Finally, after an hour or hours or a day, Snake is met with the sound and sight of a roaring motorcycle. For a moment he thinks he's younger again and the town around himself is instead a deep Russian jungle. Eva snaps up her visor but doesn't get off from her bike. It's odd, but what hasn't been absurd and life-threatening about this town? It's odd that she would be here, looking like she did during the mission that ended Snake's life as he knew it. Yet not that odd. There had already been enough visions. Snake's ears still ring from the silence of Silent Hill. Eva smiles. She looks whole and healthy, her jumpsuit zipped all the way up, her long blond hair cascading down her back. 

”John,” she says, her voice clear and bright.   
”Had a rough day, John? Don't worry, get on the bike.” 

What prompts Snake to do just that, he doesn't know. He doesn't know what to do with his hands, or the bat or the flashlight. Tucks them in proper places on his weapon belt.

”Just hold onto me, John. I do not break so easily,” Eva's murmur comes out muffled but her hand squeezes his back as he wraps a careful arm around her midsection. Had she been this skinny in Tselinoyarsk? Or after that when they had become something else? Had her pale skin been so lit with fiery red light, maybe, maybe not. 

Like this, Snake can't see that her eyes are bleeding as she snaps her visor back down. 

The motorcycle lives on, however and starts to make its way through the misty streets. Eva's laughter is the only sound of life, as are the words she has started to say. Most of them vanish into the nothingness but some Snake hears.   
”And to think, it was Eve who seduced the snake and not the other way around- quite a legend, people would say, don't you think?” Snake carefully tightens his grip on her. Her heart thumps. Steady and alive.   
”And then the snake seduced Adam instead,” Eva murmurs but somehow, Snake still hears.   
”That's-” he starts but they are there. Wherever there is. 

The motorcycle stops, Eva's head slumps forward. Snake gets off the bike, listens to her murmurs that have turned into sobs.   
”But we both got seduced. By promises, by the snake who made those promises. I- I gave it all and yet he never noticed. I carried his children, pieces of him and he never-” Snake's fingers, reaching for her shoulder, still when he notices her bleeding eyes. 

”Hey, hey, Eva-” he gently takes off her helmet but she pries his fingers off, her own cold as midwinter.   
”Nobody mattered to you in the end but her, isn't that right? Nobody had ever mattered to you but her.” Snake tenses.  
”I don't know what you're talking about,” he says but Eva pulls away from him, then points towards a longer stretch of street.

”Go that way and maybe you will find an answer.” 

”Eva, wait-” 

Yet once more, he blinks and she has turned corporeal, the sound of her motorcycle now as silent as death. Snake doesn't understand. Doesn't want to understand. He closes his eye, presses hand to his face. The mist cloaks his mind, stuffs his head full of cotton. Static. The scent of decay. The moment of peace when he saw her face. The moment of tension when his reflection had spoken back at him. 

His earpiece buzzes but Kaz's words come one by one.   
”him-” bzzzzzzt ”-go-” bzzzzt bzzzt, ”boss-” 

Snake doesn't call out. Starts to walk instead from the shadow of Eva, already fading back to his past.


	3. No sympathy for the devil

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so i finished this. i have a huge headache so this might not make a whole lot of sense.

It's tough to tell the time when everything is shrouded in grey. Snake doesn't know if it's day or night, doesn't know how long it's been since he found himself in the middle of a nightmare. Being faced with the people he had met and shared his life with- his hopes, his dreams, his past and his present. All the people who had had their lives changed because of him. Snake has to stop for a moment, to take off his gloves and press a clammy hand against his face. He squeezes his eye shut and takes a deep breath. His ears pick up whispering but he pays no mind. It's nothing, probably. Or just another tormented soul looking for retribution in him. 

”What can I say?” He spreads his hands, turns around. The street continues backwards and onwards, crumbling but straight. The exact same. An outline of a park fence can be seen through the fog but Snake doesn't go that way. Nothing else. Not even the sun or the moon can be seen. Snake wipes ash from his shoulders and continues. 

”Nothing, that's what,” he murmurs.   
”Nothing I say or do will bring the past back.” 

He had known it all along, had felt the inevitable passing of time in his very bones ever since he was a child and had taken his first steps towards today. He had known it yet what had he done about it? What could he have done about it? He had made the right decisions. He had created his armies, then started on a nation because war had always been the only time he had felt alive. War in the human mind and on the battlefield. War that was a Soviet jungle and The Boss' steel heart. War- war that was a comrade, seeing himself in the mirror bloodsoaked and old. 

Yet. 

Hadn't he stepped on enough bodies, hadn't he pushed away enough people; when his first army had been nothing but a shack on the beach, he had enjoyed it. But Costa Rica is years behind, MSF lays at its grave at the bottom of the sea and Kazuhira Miller is six feet under. It doesn't matter to regret now. 

”I'm still here,” murmurs Kaz in the earpiece and says nothing else. 

Snake walks. 

X

It takes him so long to encounter another being that he's almost glad for the packs of mutilated, growling, drooling dogs. With few carefully timed swings of the bat, blood and rotten guts splattering on him, Snake manages to take them down. He grimaces as he makes sure they're dead, squints at the way their necks seem broken, their purple, swollen tongues hanging off their mouths. Their fur is gone, their skin ripped off to reveal red, bloodied muscle. Snake's jaw tightens. His phantom had been found a companion in a wolf dog once. Maybe Snake himself would have found comfort in an animal companion whose loyalty truly was undying. 

He straightens, spit blood out of his mouth and continues. He has nothing to wipe the bat on so he doesn't, lets the blood drip, drip, drip down to the street. He leaves behind a mess and a trail of faint bloody footprints.

With a growl, he counters another surprise attack, lets his bat smash against the midsection of an advancing, holing creature. It wears the Diamond Dog-emblem but its uniform is in tatters, a hole in place of its heart. It screams boss, boss, boss. 

Snake's grip on the bat is tight as he smashes the creature to its unnatural death from its unnatural life. 

”Just a figment of my imagination,” Snake says. He's never had much of an imagination. He spits blood and wipes his mouth and oddly enough, craves a cigar.  
”We'll make diamonds from their ashes,” whispers his own voice in his ears but it's his phantom's words.   
”I haven't forgotten,” Snake says again. If he's speaking to this town, to the mist- or what spirits reach for him even now, he doesn't know.   
”I haven't.”   
”That sounds a little like denial to me, Big Boss. I would know. Since I am you.” his phantom whispers. Snake doesn't have to look to know the voice is coming from inside his head and that the street is empty.   
”Figment,” he says. ”A remnant. You are dead. You have been dead for years.” His phantom doesn't speak again but Snake knows he's still there, always as a part of him. 

The Boss had warned him against this and had he listened? 

Snake hastens his steps, eager to get to where Eva had pointed him. He doesn't want to think about her or nobody else, all the accusations, all the anger. All the love they had poured into him and he had rewarded them with death and a world that refused to change.   
”That's right, father! It's all on you!” Eli's voice shouts at him from the cold grey embrace of the mist but even as Snake turns and shines his flashlight, there is no sign of him.   
”John-”   
”I will grow up to be nothing like you,” murmurs another child's voice and Snake doesn't turn to look for David. Doesn't want to recognize his own features in that serious face. Snake walks, shuts his ears from the whispers that steadily grow in number, some now shouting. He recognizes all of them; the soldiers he's let die and climbed on their corpses, Kaz who went to his death thinking him a monster, the twins, Paz and – Snake hasn't forgotten but he hasn't thought about them. And not him, not little Chico who died not knowing why, tormented and broken. He had been nothing but a child. His voice is one of those who yell at him from the pitch black darkness growing in the mist.   
”You let me die! You let me be tortured! I was going to, going to-” his words change into sobs.  
(”John-!”)  
”I never saw how it all ended. All I knew was pain and her screams. It's all your fault, Snake.” Snake almost pauses, opens his mouth. He had learned of Chico's death only a little while after waking from his own coma and it had made his insides turn uncomfortably. It was always expected for soldiers to die in wars but both Paz and Chico had been his responsibility in a way- soldiers under his command. 

And he had let them both die. 

”John, hurry!” 

Snake starts running when the darkness starts to spread quicker, when there are now quick figures surrounding him. He swings, hits. Remnants of his own soldiers keep attacking, twisted and missing their hearts and the many mouths as their faces constantly howling and screeching. Their voices mingle together to form one horrible orchestra. Snake grunts as one of them attacks him from the back, mouths pressing against his neck.   
”- in the neck!” Someone yells and Snake twists, tries to get the upperhand but the monster is slippery and quick, despite the crackling of its mostly broken bones. The world turns into chaos so Snake misses new voices in his earpiece, can't concentrate on the murmur of Kaz and Zero, of humming heard over them, a gentle woman's voice humming a song only she knows.   
”The neck, John!” Someone yells again and this time, it's followed by a deafening bang. One of the creatures howl in pain and try to reach for their neck, but too late. It already falls down, twitching and gurgling and most definitely dying.   
Another bang, another gunshot. Snake wrenches himself free and can finally direct his blows better as not to get swarmed. He barely hears the clicks before a hand grabs his arm and starts dragging him away. Few more gunshots, made by a silvery, shiny revolver. Snake gets more blood splatters on both of them before they manage to pull away. He follows the click of spurs and a red gloved hand to a building that has almost appeared out of nowhere in the dark mist and straight inside. 

”That should keep them outside,” says Ocelot as he backs away from the door and slams it shut. Snake is almost happy to see him but then again, this Ocelot is only a little different from when they said goodbye before driving and riding in their separate directions. Longer, thicker coat, longer hair. Something irrevocably lost. Snake takes a deep breath and wipes his face, trying not to swallow whatever gore got into his mouth. He spits it to the dirty floor. 

Ocelot is dirty as well but he doesn't seem to mind, sits down instead. 

”You're not one of them, are you?” Snake asks, taking in the sight of his comrade. He may not have seen Ocelot physically in years but he has heard of his work, had known that Ocelot had found his way through. Will always find his way through. If nothing, Adam is resilient.   
”John,” says Ocelot, crosses his legs. He has two revolvers still, only one out of its holster.   
”I am not here to kill you. Possibly the only person in this universe who doesn't want to do that.” He starts to take apart his gun, to clean it. Snake sits down opposite to him on a creaky couch and watches.   
”But no. I'm only a manifestation of Ocelot's loyalty to you. What pain I feel isn't caused by you. My life wasn't ruined by you. Thus, no killing instinct.” Ocelot's eyes snap up to his former boss. Snake doesn't move an inch. 

”But I am here to guide you. The dark has come outside and you can't go there now. She.. prowls there now. Looking for you. You ruined her choice, you made it all about you.”   
”I only want what she wanted,” Snake says, his voice low and husky. His hand forms a fist but he keeps it in his lap, looks down at it. Ocelot huffs.   
”My mother wanted peace. You'd rather kill yourself than have peace. So she looks for you, wants to save the world again because even as she is now, she thinks of the world first.” Snake shifts, the couch creaks. He gets up, starts pacing. Doesn't even flinch when the dead shouts profanities behind the boarded windows of the building. Even when the profanities are filled with his name, with his titles.   
”I-” Snake starts, Ocelot hushes him. He clicks the parts of his gun back into place.   
”Everything that you see here, John, is created by you. This town has a way of making everything inside of you physical.”   
”Why?”   
”If I knew, I would tell you. I always tell you everything, John.”   
”Do you?” Snake stops pacing. Ocelot looks at him, his smile not reaching his eyes.   
”No.” 

He had presses a hand against the back of one of Snake's children. Had watched Eli grow up, hatch his plan in silence and rage. Had seen Snake's anger in Eli's face. Ocelot tells Snake many things but not all. Never all. 

”I don't understand,” Snake says.   
”Don't you?” Ocelot counters, looks down. Snake takes a deep breath when he notices the ghost right behind Ocelot, one bleeding tear falling down a translucent cheek. Ocelot's hand brushes his shoulder like he knew where the ghost's hand was.   
”You do. All of your guilt. All of your anger. All of the grief you never dealt with. How does it feel to have it all in front of you?”   
Snake starts pacing again, lets the earpiece drop when Kaz's voice starts shouting his pain at him once more.   
”How do you think?” Snake says, turns his back to Ocelot who listens to Kaz's words.   
”-bottom of the sea, all of it, our hopes, our dreams- I lost it all, all! But when I knew the truth, I knew that was the moment everything was gone. What do I have left? Nothing! Big Boss can go to hell-”   
”See. You can't even defend yourself. You know you're a manipulative, abusive person. You always gave us an ultimatum: you or death. You or the world. You or the times.”   
Before Snake can answer or defend himself in any way, the door rattles, bangs off its hinges. Ocelot is up from the chair in a blink of an eye, both guns in hands. 

It's The Boss, her blackened, twisted self that squeezes her way in. She's moving slow but growling, the darkness slithering in slowly but surely.   
”Jaaaaack!” Snake lets the bat drop when Ocelot points to the couch.  
”Under it, quick!”   
Uncovering an assault rifle, clearly modified and repaired a few times, Snake raises it. The Boss shows her wide, sharp teeth, her lips chapped and split. The bullethole in her forehead continues to bleed.   
”Jack, did you think you could escape? And here you hide-” it's gruesome to hear such a voice from her mouth, the words animalistic in their rage and disappointment. She takes out the Patriot and prepares to shoot. Whatever is holding her back from advancing further doesn't seem to stop her from aiming and shooting. 

What follows is a rain of bullets and dodging that's not good for an old man's knees. The Boss' shadow growls and screams, all that she was in life gone. Snake breathes hard, tasting nothing but ash and blood.   
”How do I stop her?” He shouts, Ocelot peeking from behind a corner of the large living room. Fighting in such cramped space had never been anyone's idea of fun.   
”You just- shit-” Ocelot stumbles as a bullet hits him straight in the gut. He spits blood but waves a hand when Snake gets up to go to him.   
”She can't be stopped! She is your greatest grief, your disappointment in yourself and the country that abandoned you!” Ocelot spits again, shoots, dodges. Snake moves, doesn't shoot. The Boss' ghost screams again, this time his name.   
”You need to go! That door leads to the underground, she never goes there.” 

Bullets splatter against the walls, Ocelot grunts in pain. Snake sneaks away from them, glances behind.   
”Jack!” The Boss yells. His greatest grief. He had put that hole between her eyes.   
”John!” Ocelot yells, shoots the floor beneath The Boss's feet.   
”Just go! I'll catch up!” 

Snake goes through the door shown to him, doesn't look back. He runs down stairs so many he loses count in seconds, nearly stumbles because the darkness around him grows even harder to see. Grasping for his flashlight he lights it and focuses more on his steps, on how silent it gets around him the more he descents. He isn't followed even as he reaches a platform. The underground appears to be used for storage, stacked with barrells and bookshelves, the only light in the ceiling not working. 

Now that silence is the only thing surrounding Snake, he takes a seat by a bookshelf. Not even surprised when the chair doesn't fall apart under him. Snake covers his face with his hands and takes deep breaths, tries to ignore the stale stench of decay now permanently clinging to him. He goes through every single person he remembers in his head, all the people he had wronged when he had thought he'd been right. The immeasurable number of soldiers whose corpses had been made into his pavement, into the foundation of his Zanzibarland. The children. The adults. Kaz. The Boss. 

Snake leans back on the chair and stares up at the stony ceiling. His body aches from old and new pains and from the pain inside his head. It's not like he hadn't been wronged. The Boss had abandoned him for her quest, to become a pariah and a saviour but had he been wrong? Snake closes his eyes and is momentarily back there, on that field. Even decades later he remembers exactly what it was like, staring down at her prone body and white flowers now stained with red. Zero had stolen his DNA, had created clones and a mental copy and created Cipher. Pushing people like Skull Face onwards. 

Yet.

Isn't it him who seems like a monster compared to them? 

”I did what I thought was right.” His words don't have an echo. They sound smaller, like fool's words.   
”You did what you thought was right, fuck the rest of us,” speaks Ocelot nearby. How long he's been leaning against the bookshelf, Snake doesn't know. Can't even care. If this is the only companionship he's going to get, he's going to take it.  
”You were the only one who never turned his back on me,” Snake says. Ocelot hums. His features are mostly hidden since the only source of light is Snake's flashlight.   
”And for what? You turned your back on me. We'll meet again, you said. Did we? No. I did everything for you and you never gave anything back.” Ocelot never raises his voice, never moves from his spot but Snake still gets up, takes a step away. Ocelot laughs.  
”I'm not here to kill you. Or try to. I don't feel betrayed by you.”

”Getting revenge didn't give me back my missing limbs or lost comrades,” whispers Kaz from the earpiece.   
”You see now?” Ocelot says, takes a step back so he's hidden in the shadows. Snake doesn't turn the flashlight towards him.   
”Or you. You had already been lost to me.” Snake swallows. He spreads his arms, shrugs, turns away so Ocelot doesn't see his face.   
”I can't change the past,” he finally grunts. His fingers are itchy and clammy, he knows the blood on him is well on its way to drying up. It never really goes away.   
”No, you can't. And you don't deserve-”   
”a second chance,” concludes Kaz in the radio. He sounds far away, older.   
”No, I don't.” 

The surroundings shift with that confession. Snake turns but the room is shifting, sliding away in his eyes. He blinks, rubs his eye. It's pitch black again, his flashlight gone from his hand. Noise slithers back into his world and he has a sense of vertigo, is nearly thrown off his feet.

”You can't wash away your sins, Snake.” It's Eva who speaks, right into his ear. It's a little like she's right there with him.  
”But you can stop the world from breaking apart because of you.” 

Snake can't see, can't hear nothing but her voice. Her voice that's shifting into another- his own. 

”Would you die for a better world?”

Would he have answered no before? Would he have answered at all? 

Snake breaths. Thinks of all the pain and grief he's left behind himself.   
”Yes.”


End file.
